Opinion of the Court.

revoke those powers and exercise them in a more direct manner, and one more conformable to its wishes. So with trusts connected with public property, or property of a special character, like lands under navigable waters, they cannot be placed entirely beyond the direction and control of the State.

The harbor of Chicago is of immense value to the people of the State of Illinois in the facilities it affords to its vast and constantly increasing commerce; and the idea that its legislature can deprive the State of control over its bed and waters and place the same in the hands of a private corporation created for a different purpose, one limited to transportation of passengers and freight between distant points and the city, is a proposition that cannot be defended.

The area of the submerged lands proposed to be ceded by the act in question to the railroad company embraces something more than a thousand acres, being, as stated by counsel, more than three times the area of the outer harbor, and not only including all of that harbor but embracing adjoining submerged lands which will, in all probability, be hereafter included in the harbor. It is as large as that embraced by all the merchandise docks along the Thames at London; is much larger than that included in the famous docks and basins at Liverpool; is twice that of the port of Marseilles, and nearly if not quite equal to the pier area along the water front of the city of New York. And the arrivals and clearings of vessels at the port exceed in number those of New York, and are equal to those of New York and Boston combined. Chicago has nearly twenty-five per cent of the lake carrying trade as compared with the arrivals and clearings of all the leading ports of our great inland seas. In the year ending June 30, 1886, the joint arrivals and clearances of vessels at that port amounted to twenty-two thousand and ninety-six, with a tonnage of over seven millions; and in 1890 the tonnage of the vessels reached nearly nine millions. As stated by counsel, since the passage of the Lake Front Act, in 1869, the population of the city has increased nearly a million souls, and the increase of commerce has kept pace with it. It is hardly conceivable that the legislature can divest the State of the control

Opinion of the Court.

and management of this harbor and vest it absolutely in a private corporation. Surely an act of the legislature transferring the title to its submerged lands and the power claimed by the railroad company, to a foreign State or nation would be repudiated, without hesitation, as a gross perversion of the trust over the property under which it is held. So would a similar transfer to a corporation of another State. It would not be listened to that the control and management of the harbor of that great city a subject of concern to the whole people of the State-should thus be placed elsewhere than in the State itself. All the objections which can be urged to such attempted transfer may be urged to a transfer to a private corporation like the railroad company in this case.

Any grant of the kind is necessarily revocable, and the exercise of the trust by which the property was held by the State can be resumed at any time. Undoubtedly there may be expenses incurred in improvements made under such a grant which the State ought to pay; but, be that as it may, the power to resume the trust whenever the State judges best is, we think, incontrovertible. The position advanced by the railroad company in support of its claim to the ownership of the submerged lands and the right to the erection of wharves, piers and docks at its pleasure, or for its business in the harbor of Chicago, would place every harbor in the country at the mercy of a majority of the legislature of the State in which the harbor is situated.

We cannot, it is true, cite any authority where a grant of this kind has been held invalid, for we believe that no instance exists where the harbor of a great city and its commerce have been allowed to pass into the control of any private corporation. But the decisions are numerous which declare that such property is held by the State, by virtue of its sovereignty, in trust for the public. The ownership of the navigable waters of the harbor and of the lands under them is a subject of public concern to the whole people of the State. The trust with which they are held, therefore, is governmental and cannot be alienated, except in those instances mentioned of parcels used in the improvement of the interest thus held, or when parcels

Opinion of the Court.

can be disposed of without detriment to the public interest in the lands and waters remaining.

This follows necessarily from the public character of the property, being held by the whole people for purposes in which the whole people are interested. As said by Chief Justice Taney, in Martin v. Waddell, 16 Pet. 367, 410: "When the Revolution took place the people of each State became themselves sovereign, and in that character hold the absolute right to all their navigable waters, and the soils under them, for their own common use, subject only to the rights since surrendered by the Constitution to the general government." In Arnold v. Mundy, 1 Halsted, 1, which is cited by this court in Martin v. Waddell, 16 Pet. 418, and spoken of by Chief Justice Taney as entitled to great weight, and in which the decision was made "with great deliberation and research," the Supreme Court of New Jersey comments upon the rights of the State in the bed of navigable waters, and, after observing that the power exercised by the State over the lands and waters is nothing more than what is called the jus regium, the right of regulating, improving and securing them for the benefit of every individual citizen, adds: "The sovereign power, itself, therefore, cannot consistently with the principles of the law of nature and the constitution of a wellordered society, make a direct and absolute grant of the waters of the State, divesting all the citizens of their common right. It would be a grievance which never could be long borne by a free people." Necessarily must the control of the waters of a State over all lands under them pass when the lands are conveyed in fee to private parties, and are by them subjected to use.

In the case of Stockton v. Baltimore and New York Railroad Company, 32 Fed. Rep. 9, 19, 20, which involved a consideration by Mr. Justice Bradley, late of this court, of the nature of the ownership by the State of lands under the navigable waters of the United States, he said:

"It is insisted that the property of the State in lands under its navigable waters is private property, and comes strictly within the constitutional provision. It is significantly asked,

Opinion of the Court.

can the United States take the state house at Trenton, and the surrounding grounds belonging to the State, and appropriate them to the purposes of a railroad depot, or to any other use of the general government, without compensation? We do not apprehend that the decision of the present case involves or requires a serious answer to this question. The cases are clearly not parallel. The character of the title or ownership by which the State holds the state house is quite different from that by which it holds the land under the navigable waters in and around its territory. The information rightly states that, prior to the Revolution, the shore and lands under water of the navigable streams and waters of the province of New Jersey belonged to the King of Great Britain as part of the jura regalia of the crown, and devolved to the State by right of conquest. The information does not state, however, what is equally true, that, after the conquest, the said lands were held by the State, as they were by the king, in trust for the public uses of navigation and fishery, and the erection thereon of wharves, piers, light-houses, beacons and other facilities of navigation and commerce. Being subject to this trust, they were publici juris; in other words, they were held for the use of the people at large. It is true that to utilize the fisheries, especially those of shell fish, it was necessary to parcel them out to particular operators, and employ the rent or consideration for the benefit of the whole people; but this did not alter the character of the title. The land remained subject to all other public uses as before, especially to those of navigation and commerce, which are always paramount to those of public fisheries. It is also true that portions of the submerged shoals and flats, which really interfered with navigation, and could better subserve the purposes of commerce by being filled up and reclaimed, were disposed of to individuals for that purpose. But neither did these dispositions of useless parts affect the character of the title to the remainder."

Many other cases might be cited where it has been decided that the bed or soil of navigable waters is held by the people of the State in their character as sovereign in trust for public

Opinion of the Court.

uses for which they are adapted. Martin v. Waddell, 16 Pet. 367, 410; Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan, 3 How. 212, 220; McCready v. Virginia, 94 U. S. 391, 394.

In People v. New York and Staten Island Ferry Co., 68 N. Y. 71, 76, the Court of Appeals of New York said:

"The title to lands under tide waters, within the realm of England, were, by the common law, deemed to be vested in the king as a public trust, to subserve and protect the public right to use them as common highways for commerce, trade and intercourse. The king, by virtue of his proprietary interest could grant the soil so that it should become private property, but his grant was subject to the paramount right of public use of navigable waters, which he could neither destroy nor abridge. In every such grant there was an implied reservation of the public right, and so far as it assumed to interfere with it, or to confer a right to impede or obstruct navigation, or to make an exclusive appropriation of the use of navigable waters, the grant was void. In his treatise De Jure Maris (p. 22) Lord Hale says: 'The jus privatum that is acquired by the subject, either by patent or prescription, must not prejudice the jus publicum, wherewith public rivers and the arms of the sea are affected to public use;' and Mr. Justice Best, in Blundell v. Catterall, 5 B. & A. 268, in speaking of the subject, says: "The soil can only be transferred subject to the public trust, and general usage shows that the public right has been excepted out of the grant of the soil.' .

"The principle of the common law to which we have adverted is founded upon the most obvious principles of public policy. The sea and navigable rivers are natural highways, and any obstruction to the common right, or exclusive appropriation of their use, is injurious to commerce, and if permitted at the will of the sovereign, would be very likely to end in materially crippling, if not destroying it. The laws of most nations have sedulously guarded the public use of navigable waters within their limits against infringement, subjecting it only to such regulation by the State, in the interest of the public, as is deemed consistent with the preservation of the public right."